


Behind Closed Doors

by Sigridhr



Category: Tumblr - Fandom
Genre: Angst, Baked Goods, Crack, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-04
Updated: 2013-02-04
Packaged: 2017-11-28 05:33:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,021
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/670846
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sigridhr/pseuds/Sigridhr
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Once upon a time there was a small company that specialized in the making of baked goods of all kinds.</p>
<p>Or, how Amidtheflowers met a cake, fell in love and had her heart broken.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Behind Closed Doors

**Author's Note:**

  * For [amidtheflowers](https://archiveofourown.org/users/amidtheflowers/gifts).



> I'm not sorry.

Once upon a time there was a small company that specialized in the making of baked goods of all kinds. This was an exceptionally popular business, given that people are generally quite fond of sugary confections of all kinds, and that this particular business specialized in over a thousand different and peculiar shades of icing, that both delighted and astounded the population. They were at the forefront of confectionary experimentation – at the height of their field, and on top of their game, so to speak. 

 

In the back of the company was a small room labelled "DO NOT ENTER", into which only a few people were allowed (despite the sign — for they were people permitted to ignore signs. In the confectionary world, your importance was judged by the number of signs you were permitted to ignore). Inside this room the select few with sign-ignoring privileges carried out secret experiments, which were often done secretly. 

 

One day one of these experiments went horribly, irreparably wrong. What was born was not so much a cake as a cake monster; a great, lopsided, lumpy beast of a cake, whose icing stood out like bold red spines from its ill-mixed and over-risen back. It was clear to all that the cake could never be sold (they had, of course, to think of the _children_ ). It was agreed that it must be destroyed for the sake of all mankind, so that no one would ever know the great shame that they had wrought. 

 

They charged Amidtheflowers, their intern and cake-taster extraodinaire, with this difficult and dangerous task, and then promptly all went out for a much needed coffee break. 

 

Amidtheflowers carefully carried the monstrosity of a cake over to the garbage, and began to tilt the platter to dump it in. The cake squealed in alarm, crumbling and crawling its way up to cling to her fingers, wrapping its icing tendriled fingers around her own and making a desperate chirping sound of alarm. 

 

She looked down at it, with its mis-shaped buttercream flowers that had turned out more fire-engine red than soft-petal pink, with its lumps of flour not fully dissolved in the mixture, spilling out of its sides in great wheezing gasps as it clung to her, with its sloppy-uneven fondant patterns, like perverse and scrawling spidery curlicues up its sides, and she felt her heart break. 

 

Quickly as she could she placed it into a small container and slipped it into her bag, bringing it home with her. 

 

 

It lived in a little tupperware box on her dresser. 

 

It was a surprisingly good listener, for a cake. It listened to her worries, her dreams, her aspirations, her fantasies, all without interruption. It laughed at her jokes, murmured soft, wordless encouragement when she was sad, and happy, saccharinely sweet caresses of support when she was down. 

 

She found herself growing more and more attached to it. But the cake could not be kept forever. 

 

It began to ask questions. Important questions. Questions like, 'who are you?', 'what is this place?' and 'why do I taste like buttercream?'

 

"You are a confectionary experiment," said Amidtheflowers sadly. The cake thought long and hard about this. 

 

"What is that?" it asked, three days later, after considering the question at length. (It was a particularly ponderous cake). 

 

"A cake," said Amidtheflowers. Then she pulled out a powerpoint and several venn diagrams she'd prepared for the occasion, and explained the principle structure and nature of a cake. 

 

The cake took notes, and then said 'hmm', thoughtfully, before retreating to think some more on the topic. 

 

 

"Why am I here?" it asked, later, when it had decided that it understood the concept of 'cake' and its own relation to it. 

 

"I have saved you," said Amidtheflowers. 

 

Then she gave him a very small copy of Chicken Soup for the Baked Good's Soul to cheer him up, because his icing flowers were beginning to droop. 

 

 

It would be difficult to pinpoint the precise moment when she fell in love. Something had been begun the moment it had clung to her, hanging over the garbage like a star in an Indiana Jones film and chirping desperately for its life. Or, perhaps it was later, when she had explained the proper proportions of cake to frosting to it, and it had nodded solemnly at her and asked shyly if its proportions were proper (they weren't, but she didn't have the heart to tell it). But she did love it, and there was not turning back now. 

 

She made hot chocolate for them both, placing the cake's in a mug close enough for the steam to waft towards it. 

 

"I love you," she said as she reorganized her bookshelf.

 

"Why?" asked the cake. 

 

"I don't know," she replied. "I just do." 

 

"That's not a very good reason," said the cake. 

 

Amidtheflowers just shrugged and went back to shelving books by colour in order to create a pattern that mimicked the silhouette of Loki. 

 

 

"I think," said the cake late one night as she was drifting off to sleep, "that I love you too. But I am not certain what that means." 

 

"I'll make a powerpoint," said Amidtheflowers. 

 

 

But all things must come to an end. 

 

The cake began to grow stale. Its joints cracked, and it began to feel a tightness within it as it slowed and its lopsided icing petals began to fall off. 

 

"I'm dying," it said. 

 

"No you aren't," Amidtheflowers insisted. But they both knew it was a lie. 

 

One day, the cake stopped moving altogether, and it sat, still and quiet, in its tupperware box. 

 

"I love you," said Amidtheflowers.

 

The cake did not reply. 

 

When Amidtheflowers went into work the next day, she found that the team of confectionary makers who were important enough to ignore The Sign had made a new being. It was larger and more bulbous than the last, with thick chocolate frosting that fell in great globs off it, its cake over-moist and cracked. 

 

She grinned. It wasn't even an hour later before she'd smuggled it home and given it a tupperware box of its own. 


End file.
